Kasus Studi: Delta Cikapundung & Lapangan Gasibu
Ir. RR Dhian Damajani, MT.
EXTENDED ABSTRACT : The topic of this research is concerned with the nature of contemporary urban public space in Bandung, one of the densely populated cities in Indonesia, which has a very interesting historical development. In its beginnings, Bandung was a humble village surrounded by several local empires of the Parahyangan region, which later developed into a traditional settlement. The arrival of Dutch colonialism, marked by the legendary Groote Postweg (Great Post Road) initiated by Daendels in 1911, resulted in development of Bandung into a colonial city. Her ultimate achievement in urban design and development was with the success of architect/planner Thomas Karsten and his contemporaries in implementing European Garden City design principles, making Bandung reknowned as “Parijs van Java” during her golden era.
Nowadays, Bandung continues to develop and change. External factors such as the growth of towns around Bandung and the impacts of globalization, particularly due to flows of information through the media, along with her dynamic citizens, have provided development impacts on Bandung. In response to these processes, the powers of internal factors have encouraged the emergence of counter sites as a form of resistance, to the hegemonic and powerful external factors. Bandung has become an urban melting-pot, which consists of diverse cultures and traditions. On the other hand, for potential cultural clashes looms large. The complexity of urban problems has lead to the need for new ways of understanding the city. Previous theories seem to be less accommodating in revealing, expressing and situating these problems within a deep and comprehensive study.
The City has become spaces where factors and actors are mutually reshaping one another with other aspects, such as societal individual inventiveness, entrepreneurship, and societal interest, including corporate and political interest (Castell: 1996). This causes Urbanscape in Bandung to appear as chaotic entity which due to implausible policy making and design, on one hand implies its fragile affiliation to public needs and in other hand provide possibility for people to create their own space. This framework attempt to reveal local condition in Indonesia which due to the vulnerability of the State in occupying the entire system of urban livelihood, Urban Space is becoming the accumulative creation of formal power working locally and globally, and local people power, hence Urban Vernacular.
Vernacularism and its characters (sporadic, self produced, absence of author and creator identity, free from any formal pressure) always model equal dialectic dialogue between people and all properties of Environment to mold specific characters of place. The term urban vernacular is used by Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblet (1999) in her article “Performing the City: Reflection on the Urban Vernacular in the book compilation “Everyday Urbanism” edited by Margaret Crawford et al (1999). In her brief article Kirschenblatt-Gimblet used “urban vernacular” to simply describe the phenomenon of spontaneous events and performances in urban spaces beyond formal city-plans.
This research is meant to introduce unique activities that occur in several types of public spaces in the city of Bandung. We have observed and documented this city’s urban life, by conducting several research methods such as interviews, participatory observation, literature study and field observation. Through this research, especially in Cikapundung and Gasibu square, more facts regarding the existence of urban-vernacular can be revealed. The possibilities of parallelism with local theories are also explored. This exploration is based on our belief that several types of spatial phenomena have already existed since the time community was formed, but continues to remain un-precedented.
Through this research we conclude that the city of today cannot be understood as a mechanistic object easily controlled by a rigid system. A city is not anymore considered merely as a matter of engineering. A city should not be also merely understood as an urban morphological type or just by its spatial articulation, such as path, nodes, edges, districts and landmarks. Cities cannot be classified as an agricultural city, an industrial city, a service city or as any another single purposed city. A city should be considered as a living organism, which can be enlivened. Like a living organism, a city can be seen as a dynamic organism that continuously undergoes reformulation and growth. Cities become expansive, crowded, and complex and developed naturally.
In conclusion, discursive context of informality and vernacularism in understanding the city is a matter of understanding its actual daily life, which is revealed from everyday activities. City planning approaches have also changed. They do not merely underline order, forecasting, and rationality, as it did in the Modern Movement. New concepts of city planning must accommodate and accumulate the complexity of urban problems, and keep reinventing or reviewing manners of highly rational and technocratic problem-solving approaches as most planners and architects do. They must not merely rely on blue prints or rigid regulations, and must be prepared to provide directions as well as creative solutions for the unpredictable, and situations of uncertainty in the future.
LIST OF RESEARCH OUTPUT :
Hidden-Order and Hidden-Power in Public Open Space. Case Study: Cikapundung Square, Bandung. It will be published in ITB Journal of Visual Art and Design, Institute for Research and Community Services, Institut Teknologi Bandung, ISSN 1978-3078, 2008.
Informality within Formality of Public Open Space. Case Study: Gasibu Square, Bandung. It will be published in Jurnal Teknik Arsitektur Dimensi, Universitas Kristen Petra, Surabaya, ISSN 0216-219X, 2008.
Vernacularism, Informalities, and Urbanism: Multi-Layered Spatial Assemblage by Modes of Daily Local Public Transport, Case Study: Bandung City. It will be published in Journal CSAAR Transaction on the Built Environment, ISSN 1992-7320, 2008.
Vernacularism, Informalities, and Urbanism: Multi-Layered Spatial Assemblage by Modes of Daily Local Public Transport, Case Study: Bandung City. International Conference of The Center for The Study of Architecture in The Arab Region in collaboration with National School of Architecture and Urbanism, Tunis, Tunisia 13-15 November 2007.
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